For a guy looking to become Raleigh’s answer to Chris Brown and Trey Songz, Carrington sure is one soft-spoken, ego-free brotha.

Despite his stylish, flashy appearance (he shows up for this late-lunch interview rocking shiny loafers and a black watch that’s bigger than his wrist), the guy does have a low-key humility about him.

“When it comes to business, man, I dunno,” Carrington says, between sips of limeade. “I just don’t wanna be too out there, you know. But yeah, man, I’m definitely a funny guy – mischievous. I don’t put that in my music, but I dunno. It just comes out sometimes, whenever I want it to.”

Raleigh-born-and-raised Carrington (last name: Wiggins) has been all about establishing himself as a serious artist since his last year of high school. Even in middle school, being a musician seemed the ideal life. He began playing drums and keyboards and learning “the melodic side of music.” Still, it wasn’t until his pals Jana Avery and Adam King, who formed the Writer’s Block Music Group in 2003, invited him to join them that he began recording music.

“I feel like they saw the artist in me, because they saw how creative I was and my musical abilities,” he says. “And that’s just what sparked it.”

Encouraged to sing

Originally coming onboard as a musician and a producer, Carrington, 20, was urged to try out his abilities in front of the mike by King. “He has a good ear for voices,” Carrington says. “He said that he felt like my voice was artistic. So, from there, I just was like, wow, that’s a compliment.”

In 2010, Carrington released a mixtape, entitled “POP-ULAR,” on which he did original tunes as well as contemporary spins on classic tunes like Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams.” While Carrington may be young, he does have a taste for ’80s-era pop and R&B, something he certainly wanted to give props to on “POP-ULAR.”

“You gotta pay tribute to the greats, man,” he says.

He was most psyched about doing a version of Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” on the mixtape. “The Mike song was probably the easiest to do, just because I would listen to his voice,” he says, recalling how he would do a pretty good facsimile of the King of Pop in the mirror as a youngster.

Performing onstage

Since releasing the mixtape, he’s taken his act to the stage, performing at local clubs as well as homecomings at Shaw University and St. Augustine’s College. “I’ve just been doing a lot of things, just to get a feel of it, you know,” he says. “So I feel pretty comfortable with it now, man.”

He’s definitely looking forward to making his debut appearance at this year’s SPARKcon, performing as part of the musicSPARK section, tonight at the nightclub Spy.

“We went to one of the fundraisers and checked it out,” he says. “It’s actually pretty nice, man. I think it’s a good thing for Raleigh, you know, to have this. It’s pretty good.”

He’s working on performing more – even doing a “homecoming tour” – especially since his debut album, “Speaker. Camera. Life,” will be coming out at the end of October.

He also wants his name to be synonymous with thunderbolts. Looking to have a thunderbolt serve as his logo, Carrington has a thunderbolt shaved in the back of his head. “When you think of thunderbolts or, like, lightning, it’s unpredictable, you know,” he says. “So I feel like thunderbolts describe me as a person. The mischief is unpredictable, but the energy on stage, you know.”